f13.net

I'm sure this will have you all frothing at the mouth... for one reason or another...

Did they say anything about patching in Star Wars soon?

They seemed to have patched in the light and dark side. But can you play as Ewoks yet?

You?  A furry?  Please tell me it ain't so....

God no. But I mean, all the other races aside from human suck ass. Ewoks use little bows and arrows. Taking down a rancor or krayt with a smuggler ewok with a bow and arrow and feign death would kick ass.

If you make a wookie really short and name him Wicket you can pretend you're an Ewok.

I think it's most interesting that this is such a targetted advertisement. Why not just reactivate all old accounts? Is it because they don't need to, don't want to or are making some sort of money off of offering Fileplanet yet more time in the limelight (or vice versa)?

They're giving trials because they're hitting those all time unique simultaneous login records ;-)

Seriously, it's about time. The populations are dreadful. They've fixed so much, but they've lost so many people it's at the point where it affects your gaming.

Truly amusing SWG tidbit: They nerfed image designers. It's now the hardest profession in the game to master (mathematically 60 hour grind with a partner, 120 hours alone -- no macros available). Has a 2 and one half minute timer and you have to stare at an image design window that takes up your entire screen while you wait out the timer.

It's the return of the EQ Spellbook.



Didn't they have a free giveaway in January just before they reactivated all the accounts for two weeks?

I don't think who canceled has any interest to come back, no matter of the bugfixes.

The last time they reactivated the accounts I logged in for half an hour to try the vehicles, then I left and disinstalled it.

I simply don't like the game.

It's about time they nerfed Image Designers.  They were way too powerful.

This doesn't look like a winback program.   This looks like you can download the game and get a 14 day free trial if you have a Fileplanet subscription.    In other words, you'd have to start a new account to take advantage of this offer.

Here's the details:


At least they're not in such dire straights yet that they're no longer trying to sell the boxes.  Though they are down to $29.99.

I'm getting mixxed signals here.   My own experience (from the January winback) is population levels are so abysmal that it's hard to run across more than a dozen players in a major NPC city, and I didn't have much luck finding any real numbers of players exploring a few player cities either.     People who are still playing SWG, on the other hand, regularly inform me that population level is fine but the bulk of the players are in certain player run cities and/or PvP zones.     Raph himself will occationally take the time to inform players that population isn't as bad as those who have stopped playing think, but I don't know if he's talking active subscriptions of players actually in the game.

Ah well, assuming I have the time, I'll probably try out the game again when Jump To Lightspeed is released.

What the hell is this? I could only wish that this game was doing so horribly that they had to let downloads of the game be free. The consumer should not allow such mediocrity on the market.

Well I recently quit 2 accounts. It just wasn't "fun" anymore and I feel like the devs have no idea where they want to take this game. Or actually I do know where they want to take this game and I don't like it. It's becoming Everquest in space.

Uber-loot which can only be accessed by large groups of the best players with the best equipment. Camping of areas. Artifical time barriers put in to slow the game down. And in a couple months a vast nerfing "combat rebalance" which will make the game a lot less fun for those of us who like to solo, work in small groups or dont have zillons to spend of teh phat lewt.

And soon, jedi everywhere as everyone is getting "force sensitive". Replacing hologrinding with quest camping and grinding to become a uber-dood jedi.

As far as population goes, I still think its pretty high based on my experience. Or at least stable since last fall when I noticed it really was empty everywhere.

SWG just is not "fun" anymore. Whatever that means. But I know I dont like it anymore. They took one of the best know license, had the people and money to make a great game and cocked it all up by giving up on the original ideas of no-loot, no-camping, etc. and just making the damn thing an Everquest clone.

I don't know what the answer is or what could be done to fix it but the realization for me came when I logged in and realized this game was more of a chore than a pleasant experience that I took a deep breath, stepped away from the computer and then cancelled my accounts.

I just don't understand how every MMORPG is designed to be "work" instead of "fun".  It's like instead of rising to the challenge and making a fun game with compelling, interesting content to keep us playing we are instead offered the same old horrible treadmills, artifical timesinks  and grinding and promised that if you keep doing this...it'll get better. Which it never does.

Does that make any sense?

Nope. No one here has ever thought any of that.

Let's beat it to death again anyway. I've almost forgotten who posts which lines on this subject.

Bwahahah. :D

Hrose, did someone really not know who your avatar was that a sig line was necessary?

Yes, someone told me I looked like SirBruce in jail.

That's awesome. Name names.

What the fuck was the thinking behind that move?

The Jedi Hair Stylist is the most feared of all jedi.

The  new Image Designer hospitals... er, Tents, I'm sure (http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/content.jsp?page=Image%20Designing)

We also don't know for how long the average play session is. Saying there's 350k+ active subscriptions is like saying a Banner Ad has been clicked X-many times. With everything that SOE tracks, I imagine they also track the average amount of time those 350k are logged in.

In every game I've played since quitting SWG, there is invariably someone logging out to stock their SWG vendor. This was just like back when people kept their houses refreshed in UO. These people are not playing SWG. They are just periodically maintaining inertia.

SWG is not going to replace everyone who leaves with brand new people forever. There simply aren't that many new MMOGers coming to the genre for SWG.

At the same time though, the Space Expansion allows gamers to exist in a facet of SWG that has nothing to do with the hallmark crafting system (not the act of crafting itself as much as the infrastructure and market). Someone who comes for the X-Wing isn't going to give a shit about being Image Designed. Whether a Musician, Dancer or a Novice Entertainer heals their battle fatigue ain't gonna mean anything to them.

So yea, this isn't a Winback program. That much we knew. But as Geld mentioned regarding the January one, people who try SWG now are going to find a good game devoid of life. The population has spread and moved to areas the Spaceport Tutorial does not drop players into.

I can think of two relatively easy ways to resolve this:
[list=1]

• Show population densities on the various planetary world maps. In the Tutorial, allow players to see this on all worlds. In the game, localize it to just the world upon which they stand.
  
• In the Tutorial, allow players to drop down into Player Cities. Even Shadowbane allows this.[/list:o]
  Together, this would let players go to where other players are, and allow their first interaction with the SWG universe to not be a lonely one.

Wow, that is the most brutal insult to EQ I have ever seen.

I figured as much. I'm glad I took the time to write all of that and let you know then. Thanks. Glad I could help you out.

You really believe that?

I agree about everything but that line. Despite the lot of work SWG is still VERY bad to me. The space expansion could make it worth playing again and ONLY if it's a completely different game.

In the end that expansion will just break even more the whole game. Exactly for the reason you wrote here and elsewhere.

As with every MMOG, there are going to be people who like SWG and those that don't. I don't like AC2. They could have 25 expansions and pay me to play the hack and I still wouldn't like it. But there are going to be folks who will like it. That's why it's a genre and not everyone playing EQ.

SWG is a good game now because the original premise has been finally near-fully realized. Almost every tool someone needs to live a virtual lifestyle is there, from playing a Slitherhorn to collecting plans to being the Mayor of a 100+ service-complete city. It's a social roleplayer's paradise, if that person can get passed the mis-application of the Star Wars license (it's not needed in to make it playable. It's just needed to make it marketable).

SWG is not fundamentally broken at some obvious level that results in a few hundred thousand people one step outside of Jonestown. It's got most of the most glaring unplayable bugs resolved, and every system except combat (and therefore PvP) actually has some good merit to it for folks who want to play SimBeru or Enron.

I just happen to want meaningful and fun combat that matters for more than running an organics business.

It'll be a measure of community burnout with the topic if the above doesn't ignite of old skool hate :)

Actually I tend to agree with Darniaq. As long as you're looking for a virtual world and not a PVE game or PVP game, SWG is pretty good right now. Most of the bugs are fixed. There are some interesting systems.

The biggest problem is the number of players and the pace of changes.

300k+ subs doesn't sound too hard to believe. But 100k or fewer active players also isn't too hard to believe either. Multiple accounts are standard in SWG, maybe worse than buffbotted DAOC. And there are a lot of crafters and second accounts who are non-entities in the game. On the other hand, all those zombies add items to their database problems.

The perception of population is even worse. I know a lot of people who left 3 or 4 months of maintenance on their houses and left. Many of those people have empty registered on the map vendors. The result is if you're shopping, maybe 1 vendor in 10 has anything on them. And you frequently run into houses named "quit for FFXI until the space expansion" or "see you in COH" That gives a horrible impression. A big field with 5 houses beats a small town of 50 houses 45 of which are abandoned.

They're about to implement server moves and when they do, I think a lot of people will be moving to the more populated servers. I suspect they will have to cope with the idea of server consolidation unless space brings vastly more people into the game. They may have the accounts for 26 servers, but they don't have the in game critical mass.

I left the game and picked up my houses and kept enough money on my character to buy just about ANYTHING when the space expansion comes out. Though, I probably won't go back because I don't expect the space expansion to be fun. They'll have one month after release to patch that in.

Maybe so, but this leaves a gamer two choices:  

1. Ride a wave of disfunction, i.e., do all the new stuff when it's new i.e. when it's broken.

2. Do all the fixed stuff, i.e. old stuff, i.e. stuff you'll be doing all by yourself.

Not really much a choice really. SWG is like every other MMOG, and in fact like operating systems: do not expect it to be perfect the second it releases.

The Space Expansion is the first bit of content that will allow gamers to not play what SWG currently is. But until then, nothing there now nor being developed will change what some people like about it. And what others don't.

Well even by the already low industry standards, SWG was about as incomplete as any game I can think of and among the worst for bugs.

You didn't play AO then, or was that part of the "among"?

SWG's use of the license is indeed way off.   Taking Star Wars and turning into this kind of MMORPG is like taking the Shadowrun licence and screwing the shadowruns so bad that the only remaining players are the ones that run the night clubs and weapon stores.   So one has to wonder why the developers haven't been busy fixxing the more swashbuckling aspects of the game rather than improving the sim-beru all this time?

It's like they're saying, "Yeah.   We know combat sucks... but, we're not going to fix it.   Sorry, it's just a lost cause."  

It's not something a Star Wars fan wants to hear.

Jump to Lightspeed is the first bit of good news I've heard about SWG in a long time.   They're adding massively multiplayer space travel and combat.   The combat is entirely different, heavily resembling X-Wing Vrs Tie Fighter with a cone of fire based off character skill.   Joystick sales should pick up prompty.  

This is something Raph told us was coming waaay back before SWG was released, but I don't think anyone knew at the time just how badly the game would need it.

And go down just as quickly. Factor 5 isn't making the fucking thing. The SOE team who made SWG is. And after seeing that combat, why the hell should we trust this will be good expansion?



...or how little we'd trust the SOE team to make a good game.

Come now, D. EQ was one of the worst for bugs as well. Once again, I'll point out that players became complacent to overlook and find a workaround. This doesn't mean that there were any less bugs or problems. Planetside somehow managed to turn out well, but SWG was as bug-riddled or worse than EQ. No, it's launch may not have been as bad as AO, but it has its own share of problems still.

Simple: the current players like it. That's one thing I think so many people often miss. Mark Jacobs said it best way back when the ranting began for DAoC. I don't remember the exact quote, and it's been lost four WT.o revs ago, but it essentially was "we're more concerned with our current customers than the ones who've left". That's not to say they didn't care about those who've quit. It's more a matter of priorities.

When Chefs needed changing before the combat system, that tells you the current players want SimBeru. That's why I said it's a solid game for some. I've got the feeling that the very same people who like SWG for what it is wouldn't care if it didn't carry the Star Wars name.

SWG didn't turn out to be for Star Wars fans. No surprise there.


I agreed until I played it. Unless it gets borked in ways even a drug-induced existentialist brainstorm could devise, it will at least have the merit of being fun to play. You won't get rich just fighting in space, but who gives a shit except those already enjoying SimBeru?


Hehe, no joke Souk. Actually, at least one could log into AO on Launch Day. But given that on SWG Day Two I could play more of SWG than I could after a month of AO, the launch day fiasco is academic. I was just responding to Numtini's rating of SWG being among the worst. Seriously, NC Soft is paving the path of solid launches that Mythic started. A few more developers that give that sort of care will hopefully swing this genre away from complacency that the players will put up with anything.

And Planetside had the virtue of a) not being a super complex game; and, b) unsurprisingly not appealing to a few hundred thousand people pounding the hell out of the servers.

AO was a buggier and less playable. However, it was more feature complete. Both got worse instead of better in the early days.

There are so many little niggling bugs still left from launch. I realize that seeing your necklace when it's not on isn't the hugest bug in the world, but the tailors have established it's a "camera angle" issue. And it worked at launch. Can't nitpicks like that get fixed after 11 months?

Only problem I have with this argument is that when new players pick up the box, they're still expecting Star Wars.   When it turns out to be something else, they're hemmoraging those potential customers.  

Also, a lot of the remaining customers probably wouldn't mind if it were more Star Wars and less Sim-Beru.    I wonder just how many of those active subscriptions are players waiting for that to come around.

My approach would have been to provide the Sim-Beru players updates along the way, but at the same time focus a lot more effort on fixxing what's wrong with the game.    

It  remains to be seen if this is exactly what they've been doing with Jump To Lightspeed.   Lets say that Jump to Lightspeed is really successful.   Will they then turn around and change to planetary battles to resemble more a FPS?

The problem is that most of the time has been spent on finishing what the original premise was, which included continual fixes and wholesale redesigns of that premise.

Player Cities were deemed a functionally required part of the game well before launch. As were vehicles, mounts, Chefs and Droid Engineers. That all came, eventually, but it's hard to focus on just fixing bugs for existing content when some of that existing content would only work within a system that includes features not yet released.

I totally agree making the game more Star Wars would benefit both existing and new players alike. But first the game needed to be done, and then it needed to be working. It's not done nor working perfectly, but they prioritized getting it even to that point.

The Space Expansion isn't just for new players. It may draw them in, but it'll just as benefit the existing ones. Like Soulbinders and Plane of Knowledge insta-port click-books in EQ or housing in DAoC.

I honestly don't think SW:G can be fixed. The design was more Sims than MMORPG as alot of people have said. Combat was boring. The worlds were mostly wilderness areas with few cities. Missions were outdoors kill mobs and destroy lairs.

It just never felt like Star Wars. The Corellian Corvette mission they put in recently might but honestly, combat is so borked I couldn't even work up the effort to try it.

I think the boring combat was and is the big big problem. I love the crafting and I'm a crafter. But there's no reason that the two playstyles can't coexist.

I tried combat for the first week or so, on and off. It just was lacking. It didn't make sense (HAM), it penalized groups using different weapons (HAM), and it was very uninvolved, usually it meant spamming your most popular move again and again. Even if that move was something that should be a "one time" in the fight thing, like dropping into a firing position.

They are supposed to revise combat, but I'm not sure it will be enough. They really need to totally revise the whole thing, put all the damage on health, try to balance it so taking more endurance or mind is valuable for MAKING special attacks, not absorbing damage. And I hate to say this for those who like soloing, but make combat require more synergy between players (ie, forced grouping) rather than just massive force.

I never for the life of me figured out why it was designed so 100% of the attacks (excluding auto-attack) for each type of weapon would target the same pool (H - Pistol, A - Carbine, M - Rifle). Seemed utterly bizarre to me.

Making one of them unhealable also seemed so unbelievably boneheadedly insane that the whole time I had in SWG I had to believe that this was just due to some temporarily delayed feature or something. Nothing else made any sense whatsoever.

Oh comeon, why mention that when smugglers could keep the enemy from attacking while ticking him for 300 while he couldn't attack. I mean krayt weapons weren't overpowerful in pvp. Oh wait, then they quite literally broke every single Smuggler combat skill (and not one by one I might add - but all in the same patch, the one that made feign death more useful, oh the irony).

And who can forget composite helmets both simoultaneously protecting you from head/endurance injury while COMPLETELY sucking away endurance.

Or even better the completely lack of /move up for decorating your house.

Or even a poison/flame tick that keeps you dead until you're completely in the black.

Or EVEN BETTER when everyone stopped talking about SWG because it's not going to be completely revised, the game (at it's core) is ass, and all that will come of it is a possible sequel that they will include what they learned from their mistakes. If that doesn't happen NCSoft better be developing 2 destroy.

I'm not so sure.

Current players like to manage harvesters (solo), craft (solo), and exploit uber solo combat templates.

I have a hard time seeing what the expansion offers anyone who enjoys the current game (barring those who coincidentally also happen to like the entire other genre that JTL is being promised for).

While I like the cut of JTL's gib as it is described today; I find it hard to understand how the current playerbase would adjust to it. Of course, they could always introduce space harvesters, require regular downtime around shipwrights, and make pilots a new type of templateer; but then it wouldn't be what is currently being hawked.

New customers :)

Seriously though, Numtini and I are good examples of the target market for JTL (even though I'm not playing it atm). We accept that combat sucks but found enough of the game to enjoy for an appreciable amount of time. So what if we had that enjoyment and combat didn't suck?

Change is hard. I'm sure there are some closet freaks bitching about the twitch-combat in space, wishing they could have Eve and go mine asteroids for some new and interesting combination of randomly-selected word fragments with 1000 OQ. But those people don't make million-unit games. The rest of the folks accept the game for what it is and will enjoy it if/when/hopefully it gets better.

JTL doesn't solve the issues that keep some people away. Rather, it creates a pocket game for them, somewhat separated from the folks who do like what's there. Maybe. It all depends on how much they integrate it before November (a more realistic launch).

I hope they don't integrate it too much. The more they do, the less their spike of subscriptions come January (when the 15/30 days ends).

Actually I have less than zero interest in JTL :-) I'm sure SOE will cook up some way to force everyone to buy it though. Free personal ship and changing the timers on starships to 4 hours or something. But  I'm solidly in the Sim Baru camp. My main character has never fired a gun.

I, also, have no hope for JTL.  They took one of the best licenses around and screwed it like a goat at an Irish barn dance.  As the old saying goes, Fool me once...  
I will wait til Schlid and some other people who are braver (if that is the right word) than I try it out before I even consider giving more money to SOE for this fecal abortion that is SWG.  Just the thought of giving ANY cash to them is abhorrent to me.  This game is the Daikatana of MMO's.  Unless JTL is precisely like X-wing vs Tie Fighter and I NEVER have to land on those ass-ugly planets longer than five minutes, I might give it a shot.  But with CoV coming out, and WoW, to go along with my CoH addiction, probably not.

You're going to be waiting a long time unless Raph or Dundee or some other poor soul has the balls to give the f13.net staff a couple beta/live gamecards to play for free. I'll be screwed by a porcupine before I pay to play that virtual chat room again.

In other news, the grass is green, gasoline is flammable, and cats have asses.

Oh, come on, schlidy, what happened to the drill?? :P

Who the fuck is Schlidy?

EDIT: And for a more serious response, I don't think 'the drill' applies to games proven - in the field - to be shit.

Sigh, I hit submit too early. Anyway, they can slap whatever corny name they want after the title Star Wars, it isn't going to get me more excited. Hmmm, looks as though that applies to the movies as well.

The role of the smart motherfucker not playing an excel spreadsheet with Star Wars skins.

If they give free FS slots with the space expansion, then I'll happily sign up. Untill then, no thanks.

If Raph himself comes to my house with flowers and a handwritten apology for SWG in one hand, and my free copy of JTL in the other, I MIGHT sign up then, depending on how abject the apology is.

Ahahahahahaha! Haemish - 2894, MMOG Devs - 0

That's what you meant to say right? RIGHT?

I never figured out alot of things. I will say that the reason mind was unhealable was because medics use mind and it led to an exploit where they could heal themselves and rack up XPs alot faster.

HAM has to go and combat has to be totally revamped (armor not penalizing you) for me to ever even give a passing thought to playing SWG again.

Ooo very close.  Actually, I meant to say to hot, NAKED, WILLING contortionists...and a beer.  Then I might.

...and Raph can't watch.

Though, to be more serious, I was SO turned off by the lack of content in that game that it has scarred me. Literally. Now I absolutely demand a decent amount of content in games. I mean I made it through The Realm, Diablo 1&2 (about 30 times a piece - the content is gone after the first ride through...at least for me), and many other games that were just plain devoid of immersive fluff. But SWG, my god, it was SO empty that flare that appeared as content (but wasn't - like one of those gungan shrines) became exciting. SOE really fucked up on this one and I'm surprised they've managed to keep as many users as they have. I'm sure they've learned a number of lessons - one of which is to not piss on a license that normally prints money.

Bah. The /first/ time I quit (I did return for a stint with WSi) was directly due to the HAM system. Well, a lot of reasons, but that was the straw, so to speak.

When the dev in charge of the rifleman profession simply couldn't understand how the class worked, I was galled. He didn't understand the importance of range relativity amongst the ranged weapons, which was pretty bad. But the worst was how he kept parroting "But you do unhealable mind pool damage!" without once addressing the fact that it COST mind pool to do mind pool damage with a rifleman. So we damage /ourselves/ in an unhealable way, and the only time one needs to worry about enemies healing in SWG is in pvp. NPCs generally don't heal in a significant way that makes doing unhealable damage any better than dealing healable damage. So where's the benefit?

And then there's eyeshot, which uses H or A, I forget, both healable pools, to deal mind damage. Usually to a rifleman in pvp who has little mind left from using specials.

Can I trust a dev team that can't understand these very basic concepts to deliver X-Wing vs TIE? Doubtful imo. Instead of fixing the core game, they give us a new mini-game. No.

That seems incomplete. Instead of fixing the fucking exploit they just can the ability to heal mind altogether?

Not that I'm surprised of course. This is just one of the very many comparisons to the very same shit that goes on in EQ, thus proving that culture does in fact transcend dev teams. No matter how different and far apart teams may be, they eventually converge through a single middle manager somewhere.

Why would SOE learn this? Lucas still hasn't, and it's been what 20 years since Return of the Jedi?

"Sand is rough, not like you."  That line, uttered by he who would become the greatest of cinematic villains, was, in fact, the tinkling sound of ole Georgie boy having let fly in all our beatific upturned faces.

I don't remember that line. Was it in Attack of the Clones? I must have blocked it.

Yes, and I probably misquoted it, because, frankly, I cringed so fucking hard the first time I heard it, I cracked teeth.  Since then, everytime that scene comes on, I pause the movie briefly to appreciate Natalie's outfit, then skip ahead to the next chapter.

Yes that quote was dead on proof that George Lucas, in fact, has never had a real relationship in his life.

If that is what passes for romanctic in his world, I pity his lady friends, should he ever have any.

And I now must go scrub my brain with chains.

haha Thank you Darn, once again taking one for the team.  I thought about looking for the quote myself, but it just hurt too much.

And one more film to go! Whee!

I'd rather watch Blackula 2: Electric Boogaloo, starring Martin Lawrence.

At least the third one is going to have James Earl Jones and a lot of Jedi deaths, but now that I think about it, it is going to be hard to swallow the transition between Hayden's whiny girl voice and JEJ's deep, throbbing one.  Oh, well, as long as they give the Bad Motherfucker a death to remember.

The only way the third one won't suck is if they dress Ms. Portman up in the metal bikini from Jedi.

Or invade her with the new lightsaber yoda has been working on. He's calling it the Sybian.

Now THAT I would pay to see.

Ms. Portman has been very hot throughout, and the movies still suck. Nobody is hot enough to fix these cinematic turds. The only way it won't suck is if Bioware makes the film!

Sky, I hate to break it to you, but that's what they said when Square said they were making an animated film. Bioware would fuck it up just as bad. I'm sure Lucas' source material is utter shite.

How about only half the bikini?

Her breasts aren't very impressive.

If I want to see hot chicks naked, there's always porn. I want an epic space drama, dammit. With adults, no kids, no goofy gungans, no cutesy ewoks, no demographic driven bullshit, no CG filler scenes (the robot factory was admitted to be a filler scene to pump up the action).

Unfortunately, I get about 10 minutes per movie of good stuff, and the rest is that other crap.

And yeah, Bioware would probably screw it up, but I don't see how. They make good games and Square-Enus makes that final fantasy crap. :)

First of all, I have no problem with her breasts. They aren't giant, by any stretch of the imagination, but they fit her frame quite nicely.

2nd- who says he was talking about the bikini top?

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to get to the bottom of my innuendo.

Dammit, focus people: Focus! No! Not on the missing bikini bottom which may or may not exist outside of one's fantasys.  This thing:

Right.  Exactly.

Although I'd be okay with a few cutesy ewoks or goofy gungans so long as they can whip out a lightsaber and cut sith into small bacon strips which they then devour and comment upon the rich Sith-like flavor.

You're weird.

I forgot to mention SuP4L337 Sith characters like Darth Retar...err Maul also need to be removed from the formula. When I saw zabraks in SWG it was one of the first signs that something was amiss. But then, what a great selection of races, the bit part bounty hunter Bossk, the fish admiral, the dog people, the supah leet zabraks, friggin greedo (who didn't shoot first), and hey....CHEWY! Ecch. Why not add in the blue singer chick with the probiscus as a playable race!? Err...push it back down, Sky, forget it ever happened....

It's so fitting the Bioware kicked the shit out of both SOE and Lucas in one release. I'm saying if they simply made KotOR into a film without adding anything to it, it would be better than every star wars movie excepting A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. I once used to care about the backstory, after hearing Lucas describe it on the VHS release of 4-5-6. Ecch. I wouldn't even shake the guy's hand if I saw him on the street, the douchebag.

What races would you have picked?  They were all bit parts other than the humans in the movies.

Well, there ya go. It's more of what's wrong with SWG, a focus on non-Star Warsy kinda stuff. A bit character made into a playable race. Just to have another playable race. Sure, enough people like Chewy to play Wookies, but were there really that many Bossk fans? I played a Dosh, but only to continue my EQ character in a new setting.

As has been said quite a few times, it's UO retrofitted over SWG. As such, why even bother with non-human races, when more effort could have gone into customizing humans. As customizable as SWG is, everyone still comes out looking bland.

Wow, what a bad idea it was basing a mmog on that license, now that I think about it. I don't have a good answer because I can't concieve of a good way to make a star wars mmog, because it's the opposite of what star wars is about, a handful of unique heroes.

One reason for the races was to continue the theme of the Emporer's dislike for non-humans. If everyone was a human, it wouldn't be so easy to tell who's side who was on. Of course, that's the "on paper" answer.

There's nothing wrong with basing an MMOG on Star Wars. It's just that they shoulda made SWG what SW Battlefront is going to be: just the battles. There is no realistic way to portray Luke the emerging hero in a world with repeatedly-spawning uber mobs. There's no way to portray Han the scoundrel in a world where nobody can do wrong. There's no way to portray Vader the super villain without open PvP, even against tailors.

In short, there's no way to be the portrayed singular heros in a genre that has anything but.

It's not that Star Wars was a bad fit for MMOGs. It's that it was a bad fit for UO.

They would have been much better suited picking a time frame like that of KOTOR where they don't have as much burden from the license.  (I'm pretty sure this has been said at least a hundred times before.)

With a time frame outside of the movies, you have a better game but a less fanboi friendly use of the license. No one will be able to meet Vader, Luke or Han. No one will recognize the factions.  But overall, you're free of a lot of the bullshit that made SWG a bad game, and bad use of license (still a great virtual world).  There were so many times in the game where they developers used the phase "we can't do this because of the time frame.. blah blah blah".  Plus, you could have meaningful PVP outside of the time frame selected for the game rather than just playing the filler between two movies.

On the topic of races, bit parts or not, they added to the game.  They added a bit more to the roleplay environment and like some people people pointed out earlier, it was too hard to pick some people out by the minor details.  Most humans just looked the f'ing same to me as a Dosh.

Well, once everyone started wearing composite, the only way you knew I was a Dosh was my lack of boots and gloves. It became..Hey, there's a blue guy...and a red guy!

You're right, many people did say this. I wish with all my heart they would have listened.

Raph did say that he chose this time frame for the conflict or some thing. Bah. Give us Jedi and Sith, thats much more fun than ewoks.

Well, the problem with conflict set in the time frame they decided on is that it's the time the empire was at it's peak, the jedi were all but wiped out.

That's not exactly even footing to start a good pvp experience from. Not like a time when there were Sith and Jedi all over, maybe throw in some Mandalorians, the Republic....bah.

Yeah, but when this game entered development, KOTOR was not out.  Raph probably didn't even know the KOTOR period existed when he was picking a timeframe.  He may have known nothing beyond what was in the movies.  The clone wars time frame would have ALSO been better, but he may not have known about that time frame either.

I don't for a second believe Raph didn't know about the earlier time periods. However, from a marketing standpoint, I imagine it was critical they hit canonized content. Star Wars persisted through the strength of the expanded universe material the classic trilogy spawned. But the average person, and the considered target playerbase for SWG, just knew canon. The devs stated this over and over early on, and I imagine the licensor had some contribution to the setting just as they did when determining how best to expand the brand through yet another solo RPG.

As someone who's 38, I consider there to be two Star Wars movies: Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. I've always wondered if that had something to do with the choice of period. For a lot of people over 30, Return was the sellout and clone wars and all that isn't really Star Wars at all.

That's what I've been saying Numtini (I'm 34).

In space noone can hear you suck.

It's not like I don't know about them, it's just that they don't count. I hadn't seen either of the two new movies until after I played SWG.

Exactamundo.  I'm 34 and pretty much agree.

Episodes 1-3 strike me more as resume items for potential ILM jobs.  Anyone ever catch Episodes 1 or 2 on a hdtv?  There's more detail in those fx than in real life itself.  Lucas's interests of late are purely technical; story, memorable characters and non-Lucas directors being very minor side notes.

Would that make LucasFilms the ID software of the film industry?

Seems like a workable comparison to me.  Once Lucas had unlimited budget and technology that could do ANYTHING he imagined, he lost all ability to make a decent movie.  He desperately needs limitations and hardships to make him focus on what is important.

I think it's more he got a swelled head. I know when Star Wars came out, I heard it was a fun homage to space opera, nothing more. Then suddenly a hundred million dollars or so later, it became A Grand Vision and this trilogy of trilogy nonsense started.

And then it all really went to hell when he started to hang around with Joe Campbell and the whole thing became some kind of modern mythos. The only thing mythic is Lucas' overblown ego.

Campbell > Lucas

I proposed setting after the movies, actually, but they wanted it to be canon content, as you say.

It's interesting how I get pinned with all sorts of decisions. Ah well, price of a public face I guess. Today on Slashdot I am to blame for issues with the EQ expansion which I am not involved in at all. :)

That would have been a far better time for an mmog as well (jedi coming back).  I tend to pretend that time does not exist as I think the books in the time period are absolute drivel.  The explosion of the second deathstar causes the local sun to go supernova which causes a chain reaction wiping out everything starwars.  I prefer that ending instead of what the books did.

And no, the Thrawn series was not an exception.  Those books were hideous.

Speaking of which, I've been meaning to talk to you about the shiny loot in Theif III.  I mean first you fuck up Star Wars, then you delay the EQ expansion, but dumbing down Theif III man?  I mean come on, cut us some slack here..

Please don't nerf blasters, Raph!

We wouldn't blame you when it came to Everquest Raph, we know better. Though I think we have pinned you for the strife between Israel and Palestine, oh, and the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Heh, one *wishes* they could be pinned on as the sole cause of a major outbreak of an STD. ;)

What I do blame Raph for is putting too much focus on the breadth of the SWG economy and not enough focus on the depth of the SWG combat system.   But then, part of that's just a matter of what I was looking for in a game versus what Raph was looking for.